Seeking Sustainable Living Solutions to Change the World

The 2014 Unilever Sustainable Living Young Entrepreneurs Awards in partnership with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Ashoka is seeking young people aged 30 and under with practical, scaleable initiatives designed to tackle the challenge of sustainable living.

Unilever Sustainable Living Young Entrepreneurs Awards

The overall winner will receive the HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize. The Prize winner of the inaugural 2013 awards was Gamal Albinsaid, 24, for providing access to healthcare in Indonesia.

The Awards are looking for innovative but practical, tangible solutions to help make sustainable living commonplace.

€200,000 in Financial Support and Mentoring

A total of more than €200,000 in financial support and individually tailored mentoring is on offer to help entrepreneurs develop and scale-up their initiatives.

Seven finalists will take part in a four-week online development programme, followed by a two-day accelerator workshop in Cambridge, UK, to help develop their ideas. The final step is a pitch to a panel of judges in London, drawn from the worlds of business, sustainability and entrepreneurs.

The winner and finalists will attend a Prize Event in January 2015 at which the HRH The Prince of Wales Prize will be presented.

The Awards are looking for scalable and sustainable solutions in the form of products, services or applications that enable changes in practices or behaviours in one or more of nine categories:

• Water, sanitation and hygiene

• Nutrition

• Water scarcity

• Greenhouse gases

• Waste

• Sustainable agriculture

• Smallholder farmers

• Opportunities for women

• Micro-Enterprise

• Tackling critical issues

Commenting on the Awards, Unilever CEO Paul Polman said: “I believe that youth hold the key to unlocking solutions to many of the challenges our planet faces and last year’s finalists are proof of this. Young people will soon represent 50 percent of the population in developing and emerging countries, but they are 100 percent of the future, so it’s absolutely vital we continue to enrol them in the task of making sustainable living commonplace and invest in their ideas.”

Polly Courtice, LVO, Director of CISL, said: “The first year of the Unilever awards highlighted the creativity and entrepreneurial dynamism of young people across the world in tackling critical sustainability issues. We are delighted to bring the research insight of the Cambridge community together with our worldwide network of business leaders, to support these awards in encouraging the innovation and leadership we so urgently need.”

Diana is an engagement leader for Ashoka Changemakers and Ashoka UK and she spends most of her time designing and managing online challenges with her wicked smart colleagues around the world, helping big businesses find the social core in their mission by sourcing and curating a growing community of social innovators.
When she's not designing challenges, she's color coding the books in her library, experimenting with interior design or cruising her bike around London.